Digital strategy is about taking opportunities to better connect to markets and to build higher value:

• The internet offers the opportunity to better understand the needs and wants of your customers:
  Procter & Gamble uses online communities to “presell” product ideas and to get feedback from the public – without spending millions on development, production and stock.
• The web is a direct channel to markets – that let’s you circumvent traditional gatekeepers: New brands like Tesla use a direct-to-consumer approach on the Internet to save retailers’ margins.
• The new digital technologies make it possible to provide new forms of value: Nest offers “intelligent” thermostats that receive data from the Internet – they know at what time electricity is cheap or when the weather will change – this way they reduce energy bills.
• The internet makes it possible to build sustainable competitive advantages: It would be very hard today to attack a company like Facebook that once was created in a college dorm room. Better customer value, cost reductions, network effects and customer lock-in can create massive barriers to entry for competitors.

How can digital innovations be used to improve your value chain? To connect to customers – directly? To create higher-value offerings?